• a fascinating morning session on the study of "lived religion" in North America with papers on Mexican-American murals in Los Angeles (below: part of the facade of St. Lucy's church, painted by George Yepes; the Virgen de Guadalupe is holding, pieta-style, a dead gang member), homosocial fundamentalists, religious and political concerns of pro-life activists, and accounting for the persistent appeal of American "prosperity theology" televangelism
among the poor in Jamaica ("Lived religion" is a void in which I find myself as a thought- text- philosophy person dissolving without a trace, but I kind of enjoy it.)• an hour browsing the book displays (possibly my last chance to scope out the offerings of theological and pastoral presses, what with the AAR/SBL split; I found some interesting stuff for the coming Spring's course on the religious right and picked up a souvenir pen from an unmanned Regent University desk)
• coffee with dear old friend Roberto
• an experimental session on the reading of Buddhist texts in which we read Buddhagosa (5th century Sri Lanka, Theravada) through Shinran (12th century Japan, at left, Pure Land [Shin]) in small groups - too little time but wonderfully exciting - the time just flew.
(I'd forgotten how I enjoy Buddhist literature.)• a happy reunion with a Buddhist environmentalist friend I met first an AAR a few years ago
• a snoozy panel on continental philosophy's recovery of religion (perhaps I was snoozy, not the panel, but it seemed oh so dry and abstract compared to lived religion and Buddhist texts)
• a dull talk by this year's Templeton Prize winner, the distinguished Canadian social theorist and philosopher Charles Taylor (I was a great fan of Taylor's work as an undergraduate, while he was briefly at Oxford, but have drifted away ... and he's drifted, too, to the point where he's happy to accept a prize connected to the promotion of research in "spiritual realities"!)
• the Princeton reception, which was huge and full of people I barely recognized - including my old pal Galen, over from Japan (Galen was one of my first friends in graduate school and we've had a running discussion about why Japanese Shin Buddhist ideas don't appeal to Americans for almost two decades now, long enough for postmodernism - such affinities to Shin, Galen insisted! - to rise and subside again...)
Too much for one day, really, but I relished every moment (well, except continental philosophy and Taylor...). How strange to think that, for all my living in the navel of the universe, I am as starved for colleagues and conversations in religious studies as folks who teach in two-person departments in remote colleges in the middle of nowhere!
